Land Before Time XV: The Night of Blood
by The Nerdinator
Summary: A lunar eclipse of legendary status has the gang preparing to fulfill a prophecy, a young sharptooth named Agilis trying to find a new home, and a maverick longneck named Macron setting out to avenge the death of his family. Despite appearances, they're connected together by one dinosaur – Redclaw, as he believes that the eclipse will give him the power to destroy the Great Valley.
1. One

_The Night Circle inched closer to the world to admire the dinosaurs there. Suddenly...something strange happened._ _The Night Circle began to...bleed? Soon, the white orb was covered entirely in red._

 _A quick pass through the Great Valley, beyond to a crater. A dinosaur of every kind, even sharptooth, but surprisingly no flyers, surrounded the crater. Their tails faced in, pointing at the crater's heart. Their heads faced out, their teeth bared. Some of the faces of the leafeaters were immediately recognizable._

 _Sharpteeth charged at them from all angles, and following them, a wave raced along, coloring the ground red..._

Bron woke up with a start. He hadn't had a sleep story of this nature since the time the Bright Circle almost fell from the sky. It was troubling, to say the least. The Night Circle was known to occasionally get close to the world so it could look at the dinosaurs below (as it should, it was the reason longnecks even had their trademark long necks and tails after all), but never had someone tried to hurt it. And what could possibly hurt something as powerful as the Night Circle? Worse, if such a thing existed, would it come for the dinosaurs next?

"Bron?" Bron was shaken from his thoughts by a voice from below him. He looked down to see Shorty, his adoptive son. The Time of Great Growing was upon the young longneck, and the top of his head now reached the top of Bron's thigh. "You okay?"

"Not really, Shorty," Bron replied wearily. "I had a bad sleep story where the Night Circle bled."

"Me too," Shorty replied. "Did it...tell you to go to the Great Valley, too?"

Bron nodded. "Yes, and I think I saw Mr. Threehorn among the dinosaurs at the crater. We need to go to the valley and warn them."

"What about the herd?"

Bron shook his head. "Shorty, I haven't been the leader of this heard since Isram took over." Isram was a bigback longneck with a strange way of speaking, who'd usurped Bron's position as herd leader two warm times ago. "I don't think he'd notice or care if we were gone."

Shorty understood. "Then perhaps we should leave."

* * *

As they walked through the forests, Shorty spoke. "Did you see that big longneck in the dream?"

"The green ridgehead? Yes, I did. It was odd, he looked much like you."

"I know. He...looked like my uncle."

Bron stopped momentarily. "Uncle?"

Shorty sighed and explained. "Before you found me, I lived with my parents, my uncle and aunt, my cousins, and my brothers and sisters. But one day Redclaw came and attacked us. He separated me from my family and then set to...work on them." He shuddered at the memory. "My uncle managed to escape, as did I, but Redclaw killed everyone else. Then–" **  
**

"You found the baby longnecks, and then I found you," Bron finished. He smiled. "Well, if your uncle's still alive, I think he'd be very happy to see you." Something caught his eye in the bushes. "Hello? Who's there?" Bursting out of the bushes came a forest hidden runner. It looked awkwardly at Bron and Shorty, screeched, and ran away frightened.

"Would a hidden runner hurt us?" Shorty asked quizzically.

"I don't think so. They may eat red food as well as green food, but their teeth and claws are too small to take on a dinosaur. Don't worry Shorty, we'll be safe."

"I wasn't worried," Shorty replied, coolly and honestly.

Then another hidden runner came from the same bush and ran after his friend. Bron frowned. "That, though, may be troubling."

"How? Even two hidden runners can't hurt us."

"No, but many hidden runners together usually means there's a sharptooth nearby. Many times, hidden runners will follow sharpteeth to steal meat from their kills as an easy meal. Sometimes, though, they'll work together with sharpteeth: in exchange for food, they'll find weakened herds for the sharptooth to chase." Bron raised his head higher. "Stay close, Shorty, and stay alert."

* * *

Luckily, those two hidden runners were merely looking for a drink, so Bron and Shorty had nothing to fear. However, far away in a desert, others had more sinister plans.

A big brood of desert hidden runners, their feathers colored sandy orange with black and brown streaks, crouched behind a large rock. The leader of the brood, a wizened male called Gorb, easily distinguished by his tall crest of green display feathers, looked into the distance intently.

The stomach of the hidden runner behind him, Thinbeak, growled. "I'm tired of waiting! Can't I just eat a lizard?" he complained.

"You could, for that would stave your hunger for now," Gorb replied sternly, "but others have more needs than you, lieutenant. Besides, a lizard would only last you until nightfall. Need I remind you we have a brood of twenty-seven hidden runners including ourselves, and an adolescent sharptooth in our care, to feed over the next few days?"

Thinbeak groaned. "Don't think that I don't. Can we really be sure Agilis is rationing herself? I mean, she _is_ going through puberty."

Gorb sighed and put his hand on his lieutenant's shoulder. "She's doing her best to fight her appetite, but she can only do so much. Look, this hunt will most likely work, and soon we'll have enough to last all of us past tomorrow. I know you're upset that our cavern was destroyed by the most recent earthquake; you don't know how much that burden weighs on my tail. Rumor has it the age of the dinosaur may soon be over, even, and I fear those rumors may be correct. But right now, I need you to sit back and trust Agilis to do what she was born to."

"Okay, but I'm not gonna like it..." Thinbeack said.

Gorb smiled. "That's the spirit."

* * *

Agilis sighed in boredom as she watched the herd she'd targeted. Manyhorns, an uncommon type of hornface with a horn over each eye, coming from each cheek, one on the nose, and ten growing out of their frills. They were light blue in color, with white stripes and markings.

Hornfaces were not among Agilis' favorites. Not that she didn't like the taste, but she preferred other game. Longneck, spiketail, even a quick turner would do for the pointsnout sharptooth. Still, the brood who'd raised her since the terrible great murderface, Yrannos the Ghastly, slaughtered her parents needed food. Food she would provide.

Agilis had been taught the language of the leafeater by her halftooth fosters, so she could feel less bad about killing the jerks of the world. She saw herself as a bit of an agent of change; she chuckled to herself at this. If anyone was an agent of change, it was Gorb's brood, for thanks to them she knew exactly what she was:

Agilis was a pointsnout sharptooth, a member of the slicehead line closely related to the plated sharpteeth. While they had huge, semi-circular heads and plates akin to a spiketail's, Agilis had a thinner, more triangular face, plus she had a small horn over each eye that her plated cousins did not. But she shared their three-fingered hands and the way they hunted: swinging their heads vertically to peel huge chunks of flesh off of their prey. Whether said prey ended up surviving and healing, or bleeding to death, was strictly a matter of chance.

Gorb's brood had a funny habit of deciding to try and figure out how closely related every kind was to each other. Agilis thought it was very strange, but it was fun to see them look over the skeletons of her kills to determine ancient relationships. And they'd come up with some unusual results. Flyers, it turned out, were not dinosaurs at all; they had a bone in their wings that no dinosaur had, and a dinosaur's hip structure was not the same as a flyer's. Not all the revelations were good, though, and many chicks still had nightmares from when it was concluded that the closest relatives of the hidden runners as a whole were the fast biters.

Agilis forced her thoughts out of her head when she saw that two of the manyhorns, the herd patriarch and a darker-colored newcomer, were fighting. Both were already bloody. Curious, she listened in; for if one left it badly injured, she'd have an easier job hunting...

* * *

Byrant smacked his horns into Ngoubou's flank. Unlike tallbeaks, shortbeak hornfaces didn't live in big herds, opting instead to stick with family members they could trust. Ngoubou had approached Byrant's family asking for hospitality, but as Byrant had expected and feared, his guest very quickly outstayed his welcome.

"Why?!" Ngoubou growled as he tried to bite Byrant's tail, but failed and got a mouthful of sand instead. "Why are you doing this?!"

"I think terrorizing my children, insulting my mother, and trying to make a move on my mate is justification enough!" Byrant retorted. He forced his head under Ngoubou and flipped him over. A sickening crack was heard as the edge of Ngoubou's frill was shattered, as were both of his wrists, as the interloper tumbled. "Now leave, and never return!"

Ngoubou struggled to stand, but when he did, there was a feral look in his eyes, not helped by the blood trickling down his face and his destroyed frill hanging over his face, casting it in darkness. "Eo will not like this," he spat.

"I don't care if this 'Eo' person doesn't like you not being able to be a monster," Byrant said firmly, speaking of someone Ngoubou had often mentioned he knew and seemed to be his superior, "but her opinion is useless here." He turned around and addressed his herd. "Come, we have other places to be."

"Agreed," Byrant's mate, Lynlyn, said crossly.

Ngoubou watched the other manyhorns leave and groaned. "A mission failed, and now I'm a not-walker. Can this day possibly get any worse?"

"For you, yes," came an unfamiliar voice.

Ngoubou's tail quills stood on end. Carefully, he turned around. "Who said that?"

He got his answer, but never knew it, as a scarlet sharptooth with black stripes running down the length of its back raced out from the bushes and charged forward. It snapped at him, prying open his skin, the wounds making it easier for it. Although only as big as him, it was able to kill him quickly with a few quick slashes to his exposed neck.

* * *

Agilis admired her handiwork. He was, from what she heard, a jerk who'd tried to take over the herd, and failed horribly. Who "Eo" was wasn't important at the moment; what was was her family eating. Agilis whistled, and the entire brood came from their hiding spot.

"Today, we feast on manyhorn," Gorb announced. He took the first bite, as was the custom, tearing off the skin from the herbivore's braincase. Next, Agilis ate, chomping off the muscles attached to the base of the tail, her favorite part of a dinosaur.

Yes, the age of the dinosaurs _would_ soon end, as Gorb had feared. In 310 years a great asteroid would hit the earth, and combined with the already bad earthquakes and volcanism, the ten-thousand-year winter would doom the dinosaurs to extinction. In their stead the mammals would have power over the world, as their ancestors once had until the day the first dinosaur had hatched.

But for now, amid the sounds of bones being cracked between rocks and the smooth muscle of the viscera being shredded, life was good.

* * *

 **Guide to dinosaurs:  
**

 **Sharpteeth: carnivorous theropods**

 **Pointsnout sharptooth: _Allosaurus fragilis_**

 **Plated sharptooth: Carcharodontosauridae**

 **Slicehead sharptooth: Carnosauria**

 **Murderface sharptooth: _Tyrannosaurus rex_**

 **Fast Biter: Dromaeosauridae**

 **Forest hidden runner: _Troodon formosus_**

 **Desert hidden runner: _Gobivenator mongoliensis_**

 **Hidden runner: Troodontidae  
**

 **Longneck: sauropod**

 **Ridgehead longneck: _Brachiosaurus altithorax_**

 **Bigback longneck: _Isisaurus colberti_**

 **Spiketail: Stegosauridae**

 **Manyhorn: _Kosmoceratops richardsonii_**

 **Shortbeak hornface: Chasmosaurinae**

 **Tallbeak hornface: Centrosaurinae**

 **Hornface: Ceratopsidae  
**

 **Quick turner: _Camptosaurus dispar_**

 **Flyer: pterosaur**

 **Bron's dream was about a Blue Blood Supermoon, a rare astronomical event where a lunar eclipse, blue moon, and supermoon occur simultaneously.**


	2. Two

In the Great Valley, five of the seven Gang members sat under a small tree. Littlefoot had called them there for an emergency meeting.

"What is it, Littlefoot?" Ducky asked. The hornhead swimmer wasn't so small anymore, her stature presently half that of her adult height.

Littlefoot, who was about half as tall as the tree itself, sighed. "I had a strange sleep story last night. The Night Circle bled, and sharpteeth were everywhere. A bunch of us were there too, including me, standing around a crater to face the sharpteeth head-on."

"Was Chomper one of the sharpteeth attacking us?" Cera asked bluntly. The greater threehorn finally lived up to her species' name as her brow horns had at last grown in, though it'd be years before they were their maximum length.

"Cera!"

"What? It was a valid question."

"No, he wasn't. He was helping us at the crater, actually. So were a lot of other sharpteeth." This surprised his friends. Littlefoot sighed. "What could make the Night Circle bleed?"

"Maybe someone find Stone of Cold Fire. Real one, me mean," Petrie said. He was the size of his mother now, but as balancehead flyers were sexually dimorphic Petrie still had a lot of growing left to do.

Cera scoffed. "There's no such thing! How can fire be cold, anyway?"

"Fire is never cold," came a gravelly voice, "but it can be less hot than other fire."

That was Spike, the five-side spiketail. The Time of Great Growing had changed him in perhaps the greatest of ways. Sure, his plates had started to emerge and there were more of them, and his namesake tail spikes were finally present, but the change within him was even more drastic. Spike had always been as mature as the other kids, but hadn't ever been able to get his mouth to say what he was thinking. That was no longer the case. Although Spike still preferred to keep to himself, and still had an enormous appetite, he was nonetheless invaluable for his insightfulness.

"How so?" Cera frowned.

"Some fires burn slower and not as hot as other fires," Spike explained. "I remember being caught in one fire that burned red, and another that burned yellow. The yellow fire burned the trees faster than the red fire did. And the flying rock Pterano wanted burned bright blue."

"So we didn't see a Stone of Cold Fire then, no no no," Ducky realized. "We saw a Stone of Very Hot Fire!"

"Thanks, Spike," Littlefoot said. "Now we know what to look for. If a flying rock that burns red comes down, we'll be sure to find it before the sharpteeth can use it to wish for the Night Circle to get hurt. But what should we wish for?"

"End of cold time forever?" Petrie suggested.

"No, cold times are good," Spike replied. "They keep the green food from taking too much green food food out of the ground."

"Maybe wish for Redclaw to never bother us ever again?" Cera snarked.

"That's actually a really good idea!" Littlefoot exclaimed.

He wasn't the only one who thought that.

* * *

Macron groaned, trying to focus on eating. He hadn't slept well last night, on account of a strange dream where he and many dinosaurs he'd never met were facing down a horde of sharpteeth. The moon had been close, it had gone red, and that could only mean one thing.

"Sir? You okay?" Tala asked him. Tala was a tallcrest hollowhorn, a type of swimmer with a narrow, vertical crest with a small half-circle at the end of it. Being female, Tala's crest was smaller than a male of her species' was. She was white, with an orange stripe running down the length of her back, with some black stripes on the end of her tail.

"No," the green ridgehead longneck replied. "I had a dream."

"What kind of dream?" a green flathead bigmouth named Quixotic asked. He and Tala were Macron's chief lieutenants, responsible for calling meetings together and calming down rabblerousers.

"Prophetic. You know longnecks are connected to the moon. Any unusual occurrences regarding it are usually an omen."

"But sun-blockings are only dangerous if you look at them directly," Quixotic reminded him.

"Yes, but this one is. For different reasons." Macron plucked an oak leaf off its tree and chewed on it thoughtfully. Oak leaves weren't the classic ten-sided shape as that of maple leaves, nor were the trees as common, but Macron preferred them as the leaves helped settle his stomach. Finally, he spoke. "Get the herd. I need to talk to them."

"Right away, sir!" Tala declared, and she and Quixotic galloped off to raise the alarm.

* * *

Macron's herd was just as big as that in the Great Valley, and even more diverse. But strangely, half a dozen sharpteeth flanked them. They were green, with black heads, stumpy and immobile four-fingered hands, and a single horn between their eyes.

Macron stood in front of them. "You may have heard that a sun-blocking is coming. That is not true. It has already come somewhere else in the world. Where we are, though, there will be a moon-blocking. But not like a normal one.

"You know of tag-along moons, when the moon appears four times a season instead of three. And of big moons, when the moon appears bigger than normal. Seeing any of these three in combination is rare. Seeing all three at once is rarer.

"And that is what is going to happen. A summer tag-along moon, big moon, and moon-blocking on the same night. Something many sharpteeth revere as...

 **"The Night of Blood."** His herd gulped. "Folklore states that on a night of blood, all sharpteeth gain the murderface's strength to kill even the biggest, fastest, and heaviest-armored of dinosaurs. They kill more than they need, take down entire herds...and entire kinds. I mention this because there is one sharptooth who would definitely try to use this to exterminate the largest safe haven this side of the world has left.

"I am of course speaking about Redclaw, the first scholar of Yrannos the Ghastly. We call their kind 'murderfaces' because they can kill any dinosaur they want to. Yrannos made that his personal mission, and Redclaw took that himself when the Five Hatchlings avenged the kin Yrannos had slaughtered.

"Wera, you lost your son to Redclaw, did you not?" A brown twohorn looked at the ground, tears cascading down her face. "Flapper, you lost your beloved mate." A blue flatcrest flyer nodded solemnly. "Opa, your grandfather, one of our best teachers of the natural world, was killed in Yrannos' name." A black broadchest clubtail stood taller, as much as her short legs would allow her.

Macron nodded at them. "And I, too, know the pain. Redclaw killed my entire family save for myself and one of my nephews. My lover, my brother, his lover, and several children gone in seconds." He frowned. "Redclaw wants nothing more than the destruction of all lifeforms he feels inferior to himself. So when the night of blood comes, we are going to march on his lair, and we are going to kill him like he killed us!

"Is it dangerous? Of course. But luckily we have some help. The six leaderhorn stumparms you see among us lost their home to Redclaw and they want it back. So much so that they have agreed to cooperate with us. Remember, any creature with my mark," he said of a bitemark on every herd member's left shoulder that he'd inflicted, "is on our side.

"Now who's with me? Who's ready to take back what is rightfully ours?"

His herd thundered in agreement. "I expected nothing more from fine folks like you all! Come, to the Great Valley!"

* * *

 **Guide to dinosaurs:  
**

 **Sharpteeth: carnivorous theropods**

 **Leaderhorn stumparm: _Rajasaurus narmadensis_**

 **Stumparm sharptooth: Abelisauridae**

 **Murderface sharptooth: _Tyrannosaurus rex_**

 **Longneck: sauropod**

 **Ridgehead longneck: _Brachiosaurus altithorax_**

 **Spiketail: Stegosauridae**

 **Five-side spiketail: _Stegosaurus stenops_**

 **Broadchest clubtail: _Saichania chulsanensis_**

 **Twohorn: _Nasutoceratops titusi_**

 **Greater threehorn: _Triceratops horridus_**

 **Tallcrest hollowhorn: _Tsintaosaurus spinorhinus_**

 **Hornhead swimmer: _Saurolophus osborni_**

 **Flathead bigmouth: _Edmontosaurus regalis_**

 **Flyer: pterosaur**

 **Balancehead flyer: _Pteranodon longiceps_**

 **Flatcrest flyer:** ** ** _Tupandactylus imperator  
_****


End file.
